“The Playa itself is a constant and powerful presence. We worked on the playa long hours everyday and watched the shifting dance of light and dark, mirage and reality, earth and sky. It was good for us to have such a focused two weeks to work on our art but we will come away with so much more. It is wonderful and enriching to be with other artists and our time together reinforced the importance of what we do but it was especially enriching to have scientists here as well.” --Rebecca Davis (2014)

About PLAYA

PLAYA (pronounced "ply-uh") is a retreat for creative individuals who are committed and passionate about their work, and who will benefit from time spent in a remote location. At PLAYA, we offer seclusion and quiet in a natural environment and the opportunity for interaction, if desired, with a cohort of residents and the local rural community. A residency provides the time and space to create substantive work or to research and reflect upon one’s creative or scientific processes. Away from the urgencies of daily life, residents can focus on their projects, immerse in a desert landscape of basin and rangeland, and find inspiration through self-directed inquiry.

PLAYA is a nonprofit organization supporting innovative thinking through work in the arts, literature, natural sciences and other fields of creative inquiry. PLAYA was organized in 2009 and began its Residency program in May 2011. For all of the latest information, including upcoming residency opportunities go to our application page.

Located in the Oregon Outback, near Summer Lake in Lake County, PLAYA manages its Residency program and a range of community and educational outreach activities. Residencies are provided without a fee offering the gift of time and space to eligible applicants, and span two multi month sessions each year. In addition, we hope to bridge the dialogue between the arts and sciences through thematic place based programming, presentations, symposiums and workshops. The intention of all of our programming is to support creative individuals who are committed and passionate about their work, and who will benefit from time spent in PLAYA's inspirational remote location.

PLAYA provides a variety of opportunities to engage with the local communities of Summer Lake, Paisley and rural Lake County, Oregon through free programs and educational activities such as PLAYA Presents.

"The expanse of the playa reflects back the perfect combination of silence and possibility. To be granted a stay here, held in the palm of this grace, is to restore belief in the self and the value of one's artistic yearning. There is no bigger silence than this one."--Melanie Bishop (Resident 2012)

Mission and Values​

PLAYA's Mission:​On the edge of the Great Basin in Oregon, PLAYA provides space, solitude and a creative community to residents working in the arts and sciences, encouraging dialogue to bring positive change to the environment and the world

Playa Values​ Respect: Playa cultivates a culture of respect for the Great Basin, its inhabitants and for the natural world we share.Place: Playa allows time for the dynamic qualities of place to permeate and inspire the individual. Interval: Playa provides an interval of time and space that encourages reflection and inquiry. Exchange: Playa enables diverse individuals to learn from one another through the co-residency of ideas and endeavors. Beauty: Playa embraces beauty as a pathway for change and survival. Intent: Playa operates in a thoughtful, resource-conscious manner that engages the vitality of the local community.

Facility

Playa’s 75–acre property includes six fully equipped and spacious cabins, two fully equipped live/work studios, three studio/research spaces (including one shared living quarters), a large open shed, and outdoor field-research areas. Access to most facilities is barrier-free.

The Commons, a central gathering building, has a communal kitchen, dining room, fireplace room, and two adjacent spaces for presentations, projects, or dance. The Commons also houses Playa’s office, laundry facilities, and an outdoor terrace. As the central gathering space, the Commons offers limited Internet, a landline telephone, a developing library, communal recreation area, and space for food preparation and dining.

The grounds, bordering the Summer Lake playa, include a large pond, wetlands, grass fields, and walking paths.

Board of DirectorsJulie Bryant, Co-Founder, Summer Lake, ORJulie and her husband Bill founded Playa in 2009. She is currently board chair, although delighted to see Playa in a place where she will soon hand over the baton. Julie’s background includes a degree in Geology and a J.D. from Stanford University. Julie's work experience has been largely volunteer, focused on social, environmentaland economic justice and progressive philanthropy. She has worked as a consultant to environmental engineering firms. Her greatest joys are hiking through remote backcountry, working on the land, and time with her two daughters Meg and Lindsay.

​William Roach, Co-Founder, Summer Lake, ORArchitectural Designer/Builder and Board Secretary. Over the past 40 years, Bill has been involved in all phases of designing and constructing single­family residential and commercial mixed­use developments, primarily in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. He enjoys collaborating with the many talented crafts people in the design and building trades. Bill is currently working on a prefabricated home project, the prototype to be built this spring in Summer Lake. As co­Founder and dedicated board member of Playa, Bill is torn between his attachment to the desert and paddling his kayak on the coast of British Columbia.

Richard Wilhelm, President, Portland, OR Richard earned his BFA and MFA in Visual Design and Photography from the University of Oregon, and then established a design studio in Seattle, which he directed for 14 years. In addition to his films with Hare in the Gate, and his design work for hundreds of clients, Richard’s photography has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and is in many public and private collections. He taught photography at the University of Oregon, Central Oregon Community College, Elderhostel for 10 years, and he has conducted over 50 photographic workshops.

​Pepper Trail, Interim Secretary, Ashland, ORPepper is an ornithologist, conservationist, writer, and photographer. He began watching birds as a boy in upstate New York, and traces his incurable love of travel to a family trip to Mexico when he was twelve. Since then, Pepper has studied birds around the world, from the rain forests of Amazonia to the coasts of Antarctica. Pepper lives in Ashland, where he is the ornithologist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory. He is involved in many regional environmental issues, especially the establishment and protection of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and is a regular contributor to Jefferson Public Radio, the Jefferson Monthly and High Country News. His poetry has appeared in Windfall, Kyoto Journal, Borderlands, The Atlanta Review, and other journals. He is the author of two poetry collections, Flight Time and Cascade­Siskiyou, and the photo­essay Shifting Patterns: Meditations on the Meaning of Climate Change in Oregon’s Rogue Valley. He is the ornithologist for the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. (Pepper is currently on Playa's selection panel.)​Jim Walls, Treasurer, Lakeview, ORJim retired from the Natural Resources Conservation Service after 33 years. He served has Executive Director for the Columbia­Pacific Resource Conservation and Economic Development District for 15 years. From 2002­2015, Jim served as Executive Director of Lake County Resources Initiative (www.lcri.org) working on conservation and economic development of natural resources in Lake County. Jim facilitated the Lake County Renewable Energy Working Group in developing a renewable energy implementation plan to make Lake County a net exporter of renewable energy, offsetting 93% of fossil fuel emissions in the county. In 2012 Jim was a speaker at Oregon State University Ted program on climate change. He has testified before both Congressional and Senate committees concerning renewable energy and climate change impacts on forests and rural areas. Jim has served on the Governor’s Renewable Energy Working Group, the Oregon Way advisory committee to the Governor and currently the Governor’s South Central Oregon Solutions Team.

Becky Evans, Bayside, CABecky is a land­based artist. Her recent solo exhibits explore the unique bioregions in the Klamath Knot, the State of Jefferson, and the edge of the Great Basin. She exhibits her work regionally and nationally. She recently participated in the State of the State of Jefferson Conference at the University of Oregon, organized by theSchool of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon and the Department of Geography at Humboldt State University. Her artist residences have included the Morris Graves Foundation, (Loleta, California), Playa (Summer Lake, Oregon), and the Earthwatch Institute (Skagit River, Washington). She was afaculty member of the Art Department at the College of the Redwoods (Eureka, California) for 30 years. She has her home and studio near Humboldt Bay, California.

Robert Benson, Bayside, CABob lives near Humboldt Bay, California. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Humboldt State and an MFA from University of Illinois, Champaign­Urbana. He’s taught painting at the College of the Redwoods from 1974­2007. Recent exhibitions include “Robert Benson”(Piante Gallery) and “River as Home” (Morris Graves Museum) among many others. He also was the Curator­Redwoods Collection of Native American Baskets and Objects, College of the Redwoods.

Carolyn Law, Seattle, WACarolyn’s public art projects range widely ­­ from design team collaborations with designers and/or engineers coupled with extensive interface with agencies and community groups, to artworks integrated into a specific project area. Her award­winning projects involve a myriad of places ­ civic plazas, parks, and infrastructure (such as bridges, public transit, wastewater treatment and streetscapes). Her art planning efforts include conceptual and practical outlines for incorporating public art into a wide variety of sites and locations. Civic engagement with afocus on the public arena has also been a priority. Carolyn’s studio work has been shown regionally and nationally. Currently her focus is on drawings as a visual journal of her thinking, interests and research, and temporary sculptural installations in outdoor settings. Finally, she writes on the creative process and public art.

​Sheryl Sackman, Portland, ORSheryl is currently the Development Director of Forest Park Conservancy in Portland, OR. Sheryl has nearly 30 years experience directing development, communications and grassroots organizing programs, and has a strong commitment to environmental protection in Oregon. Past positions include MRG Foundation, Friends of Trees, Oregon NARAL and OLCV. Sheryl has lived in Portland since 1986 and is a fair weather birdwatcher and bike rider.

Charles Goodrich, Corvalis, OR​Charles is the author of three volumes of poems, A Scripture of Crows, Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden, and Insects of South Corvallis, and a collection of essays about nature, parenting, and building their house, The Practice of Home. Charles also co­edited the volume In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. His poems and essays have appeared in Orion, Northwest Review, Willow Springs, The Sun,and Best Essays Northwest among many other publications, and his poems have been read a dozen times by Garrison Keillor on "The Writer's Almanac." To support his poetry writing habit, Charles worked for twenty­five years as a professional gardener—for a convent, a residential treatment facility for troubled teens, and for the historic Benton County Courthouse. He now serves as Director for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, at Oregon State University, a program that hosts writers' residency, literary readings, and symposia at the intersection of literature, environmental science, and ethics. (www.charlesgoodrich.com/spring-creek­project.html)

Advisory CouncilCatherine Woodard lives and plays basketball in New York City. She swerved to poetry in 2001 after an award-winning career in journalism. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, RHINO and other journals. She co-published Still Against War/Poems for Marie Ponsot. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences in 2011 and 2012 and at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciencesin Georgia in 2012. The Best American Poetry blog published her essays about the nexus of poetry and basketball.​Dr. Kate Galeis Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, LA. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. She serves on the boards of A Room of Her Own Foundation and Poetry Society of America. She is author of five books of poetry and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. Her current projects include a creative non-fiction book Flight of the Ugly Duckling, a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto based on The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle, based on Dr. Kinsey’s life with composer Daniel Felsenfeld.

Daniel Mayer is an artist/educator who investigates the intersection of language and art resulting in artist’s books, prints and public art. Mayer’s award winning large-scale public artworks are located at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Mayer’s glass designs received the Award of Merit for Art in Public Places, 33rd Valley Forward, and the terrazzo design received the 2013 Job of the Year by the National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association. Both projects took five years of production and are featured on PBS’ ArtBeat Nation: http://www.azpbs.org/artbeat/play.php?vidId=6702Mayer exhibits nationally and internationally and has work in numerous collections such as the Getty, Yale, NY Public Library, Klingspor Stadt Museum, and ArtPool Artists Books Archives in Budapest, among others. Since 1986, Mayer has been the Book Arts Printer for ASU’s Pyracantha Press. Collaborative limited-edition books include Eco Songs with Dimitrije Buzarovski, a song cycle based on earth and ecology letterpress printed on handmade paper, Petrified forEast with Hungarian artists after the collapse of the Soviet East Block, Time Square with Buzz Spector, and most recently “Individualocracy” with architect Matthew Salenger on the rippling effects of urban sprawl, featured on NPR’s The Show, KJZZ. Mayer also teaches Printmaking and Artists Books in the School of Art.​

Liz Ahl is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Talking About the Weather (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012), Luck (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), and A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, which won the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest. Luck was recipient of the 2012 New Hampshire Literary Awards “Reader’s Choice” award in poetry. She has been awarded residencies at Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Ahl’s interests as a poet include performance, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary work with visual artists, musicians, dancers and composers. She has read in galleries in collaboration with thematic visual art shows and has produced letterpress broadsides and has created limited edition chapbooks of both her own work and the work of others. She lives in Holderness, New Hampshire and is a professor of English at Plymouth State University.

Bend, Oregon resident Ellen Waterston is poet, author and literary arts advocate. Vía Láctea, Atelier 6000, 2013, is Waterston’s third collection of poetry. The verse novel is based on walking the Camino de Santiago in 2012. Poetry awards include WILLA awards for her two previous collections Between Desert Seasons, and I Am Madagascar, and the Obsidian Prize. Other titles include Cold Snap, a chapbook of poetry and prose; Where the Crooked River Rises, essays about central Oregon’s high desert; and a memoir, Then There Was No Mountain, which earned her an appearance on Good Morning America and was rated one of the top ten books of 2003 by the Oregonian. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She was a featured poet at The Nature of Words 2013, the keynoter at the 2013 Northwest Poets’ Concord and 2011 Women Writing the West, and on the faculty of Summer Fishtrap 2012. She has been awarded many writing residencies and has received an Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, a Career Opportunity Grant, a Literary Arts Fellowship, and a Werner Fellowship. After eleven years as founder/director of The Nature of Words, a literary arts nonprofit, she passed the baton in 2012 to focus on her writing, the Writing Ranch, and, most recently, the creation of the Waterston Desert Writing Prize. Founded by Waterston in 2000, the Writing Ranch offers workshops at Central Oregon Community College and St. Charles Cancer Care Center in Bend, as well as retreats in Central Oregon, Spain and Mexico. Launched in December 2014, the Waterston Desert Writing Prize will be awarded annually. Waterston is currently working on a fourth collection of poetry and a second memoir.​Jane Otto was raised in Colorado and grew up in New York City, where she lived for 23 years. Currently, she resides in Los Angeles, where she is working on a manuscript entitled, “At the Home for Wayward Girls.” Jane’s poems and short stories have appeared in Nimrod International Journal, Existere – Journal of Arts and Literature, Eclipse, Talking River, The Journal, PANK, Raleigh Review, The Jewish Women’s Journal, New Southerner and more. She was a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry for 2013, and received an Honorary Mention in the New Southerner’s 2012 Literary Edition.

Influenced by contemplative walks and close observation of nature, Jill McCabe Johnson's writing focuses on environmental and humanitarian concerns. Her poetry collection, Diary of the One Swelling Sea (MoonPath Press, 2013), was awarded a 2014 Nautilus Book Award in Poetry. She is the series editor of the "Being What Makes You" anthologies from the University of Nebraska Gender Programs, including Becoming: What Makes a Woman (2012) and Being: What Makes a Man (2014). Jill earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University, and her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. Her writing can be found in publications such as Harpur Palate, the Los Angeles Review, Iron Horse LiteraryReview, and Prairie Schooner. Jill is the founding director of Artsmith, a nonprofit to support the arts and environment, and based in the San Juan Islands.​Melanie Bishop writes fiction, nonfiction and screenplays and taught all these subjects at Prescott College for 22 years, where she was also founder, and fiction/ nonfiction editor of Alligator Juniper. Her young adult novel, My So-Called Ruined Life (Torrey House Press, 2014) was a top-five finalist for both the John Gardner Award in Fiction (University of Binghamton), and the Firecracker Award (Council of Literary Magazines & Presses). She was a Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellow (1990-‘91), co-sponsored by Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg. Her story cycle, Home for Wayward Girls, has been a finalist six times in the last five years in contests including The Mary McCarthy Prize and the University of Iowa Press Awards. Currently, Melanie lives and writes in Carmel, CA where she provides editing/coaching and writing retreats (Lexi Services), and reviews books for Carmel Magazine and Huffington Post.Margot Voorhies Thompson, Portland, ORRobert, Schirmer, Brooklyn, NY

William L. Fox is a writer whose work is a sustained inquiry into how human cognition transforms land into landscape. His numerous nonfiction books rely upon fieldwork with artists and scientists in extreme environments to provide the narratives through which he conducts his investigations. He also serves as the Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.Fox was born in San Diego and attended Claremont McKenna College. He has edited several literary magazines and presses, among them the West Coast Poetry Review, and worked as a consulting editor for university presses, as well as being the former director of the poetry program at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. In the visual arts, Fox has exhibited text works in more than two dozen group and solo exhibitions in seven countries. Fox has published poems, articles, reviews, and essays in more than seventy magazines, has had fifteen collections of poetry published in three countries, and has written eleven nonfiction books about the relationships among art, cognition, and landscape. He has also authored essay for numerous exhibition catalogs and artists' monographs.In 2001-02 he spent two-and-a-half months in the Antarctic with the National Science Foundation in the Antarctic Visiting Artists and Writers Program. He has also worked as a team member of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project, which tests methods of exploring Mars on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. He was a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, the Clark Institute, the Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia. He has also twice been a Lannan Foundation writer-in-residence. Fox has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Location

PLAYA is located at 47531 Highway 31, Summer Lake, Oregon.The telephone is 541-943-3983playa@playasummerlake.org

*Between mileposts 81 and 82 on Highway 31.

About the Area

Located at the northwestern edge of the Great Basin in south-central Oregon, PLAYA sits at the base of Winter Ridge, which rises to 7,200 feet. Summer Lake is directly to the east of PLAYA, which lies at an elevation of 4,200 feet.

Summer Lake, 20 miles long and five miles wide, is a playa, a seasonal desert lake. It is shallow in the winter, and evaporates in the summer.In 2002, the 92,000 acre Winter Ridge Fire completely burned the hillside immediately west of PLAYA. At the north end of Summer Lake, the state-owned Summer Lake Wildlife Area is one of the finest desert wetlands in Oregon. It is a destination for birds and birders year-round. The surrounding semi-arid terrain has diverse wildlife and a varied geology. Thousands of years of human use of the Summer Lake basin has left a rich record of human habitation. Weather varies with wind, snow, rain, and sun. Lake County, with a population of about 8,000 and over 8,000 square miles, is Oregon’s only county without a stoplight. Ranching, outdoor recreation, government land management, and a developing alternative energy industry are the primary economic base. Lake County was featured in a recent High Country News story, “Rural Oregon timber county seeks economic revival through renewables.” PLAYA, rural and remote from many services, is located on Highway 31, two hours southeast of Bend, Oregon, one hour north of Lakeview and five hours northwest of Reno, Nevada. The nearest commercial airport is in Redmond, 17 miles north of Bend.

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PLAYA is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov

​PLAYA receives support from the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts.

​ PLAYA is pleased to announce that we are one of the recipients of a Ford Family Foundation Golden Spot Award for our residency program. The Ford Family Foundation was established in 1957 by Kenneth W. and Hallie E. Ford. It's mission is successful citizens and vital rural communities in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California. The foundation is located in Roseburg, Oregon.